


And the City Streets Crack

by HoloXam



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Backstory, Character Study, Eye Horror, Gen, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jonah Magnus's FEELINGS, Post MAG160, Posting this before S5 makes it non-canon-compliant, The Beholding, Vague Body Horror, also be warned this is SAD!Lonely Eyes, if indeed it's Lonely Eyes at all without Peter, immortal!Rosie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24142303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoloXam/pseuds/HoloXam
Summary: "If I may be blunt, Mr. Magnus," she tells him, "You dug that grave yourself.""Which one of them?" he asks, mouth twisting into a self-satisfied grin. He turns his head and looks in her direction, pushing the sunglasses up on his forehead. The swirling eyes behind them are in stark contrast to the waters of the river, and she startles by the sight of them. They definitely weren't that way this morning – however long ago that may have been.“Most of them,” the receptionist concedes.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Rosie, Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas, Jonah Magnus & Rosie
Comments: 13
Kudos: 74





	And the City Streets Crack

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic during the hiatus, so the Apocalypse here is not suuuuper compliant with the canon one. It's still weird though! 
> 
> So many thanks to Kadet for reading this through for me, for their encouragement, and also for putting up with my general obsession with one Elias Bouchard. <3 
> 
> Title from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds's _Do You Love Me? Part 2,_ which is also kinda the mood score for this piece. Enjoy.

_(Rosie)_

The Magnus Institute is not a place. Sure, most people who know of its existence will inevitably think of the stately building by the Thames, its brooding exterior and its lofty halls, maybe the quiet library or the old drafty windows. 

The Magnus Institute, people will say. It is that place just off Vauxhall Bridge, right? 

But that wouldn't be _entirely_ correct. 

The Magnus Institute is an _institution,_ and an old one at that, having existed for close to 50 years before taking up residence in London. The Magnus Institute is what goes on _inside_ the building, and if the building breaks down, the Institute itself can pick up and start over somewhere else. 

Even now, the building still stands - not that there is much academia going on inside these days. 

* * *

The receptionist sits at her desk, twirling phone chord through her fingers. When the light falls just right through the tall windows in the reception, and the dust motes dance in the quiet light during a rare moment of absolute stillness, she can almost convince herself that the city outside hasn't changed. 

The reception hasn't changed _much:_ As a stronghold of the Eye, the building itself was more resistant than most when the initial change rattled its way through reality, and apart from some damage to the upper floors where the roofs caved in, very little _structural_ destruction has occurred. 

With some precautions, one can almost go to work as if nothing has happened at all. The clocks have stopped entirely, so deciding _when_ to go to work is a bit of an ad hoc these days—the clock in the reception has been set to tea time, because the receptionist prefers it so. 

* * *

"How are you holding up?" Elias asks, hopping up on her desk and setting a pair of styrofoam to-go cups down between the two of them. It isn't tea, she knows that, but she appreciates the gesture. One of their little rituals: Elias would bring her tea and a scone on Fridays, and they would chat about odds and ends, sometimes about trivial little things like rescheduling of meetings, and sometimes about things of more personal nature. She never had any complaints about him as a boss, though she knows others have had plenty. There are no more Fridays to speak of, and not actually any meetings either, but she appreciates the way Elias keeps the habits of the Institute running, despite everything. 

"We're running out of post-its," she tells him, setting down the phone receiver and untangling her fingers from the spiralling chord. "But I suspect we won't be needing them as much anymore. I've taken to spray-paint instead, but without much luck—the door to artefact storage keeps rearranging the letters I put on it into obscenities, but at least it stays shut. The archives are giving me more trouble."

"I see," Elias says, taking the lid off his own cup and regarding the liquid within critically, then putting it back down on the receptionist's desk. "Let me know if you need me to have a word with that door."

She nods. She picks up her own cup, and sniffs at the contents, before she too puts it back down on the desk. 

"Earl Grey?" 

"English Breakfast."

"Ah."

The cup scuttles away across the desk and flings itself to the floor. Elias snorts and shakes his head. 

In all honesty, this is not much different than Edinburgh. Before Jonah Magnus moved the Institute down to London, it operated out of a townhouse so cold and drafty that only a steady stream of laudanum drops, dedication, and cheap brandy kept its occupants afloat during winter. It was a dark, dreary place, and visitors would occasionally dispose of a maid, or tilt the stairs to an impossible angle, or make one get lost inside a cabinet for hours, until the host had a stern word with them. 

On one memorable occasion, Mr. Magnus stabbed Mr. Lukas in the chest with a letter-opener for disappearing an errand boy, and though Mr. Lukas took it in stride and the two of them made up heartily afterwards (the chambermaid could attest to that), the entire staff held their breaths for weeks in fear of further escalations. 

No more Mr. Lukas, though, as it stands. 

"What about you, Elias?" she asks, leaning her elbow on the desk. "Are you—“holding up”?" 

He looks manic as of late, his eyes shining feverishly, not quite seeing her in a physical sense. There is a vague translucence to the edges of him, an inhuman shine that wasn't there before, not even when he first obtained his gift.

" _“Elias”_ ," he says, shaking his head with a smile. "I do believe that _that_ particular cat is out of the bag, wouldn't you agree, Rosie?" 

The receptionist hums. 

"Mr. Magnus, then. Don't talk around the question."

His eyes glide over her, taking in _something,_ but whether it is her or something far, far away, she cannot tell. She isn't sure if it matters.

"Alright," he says. "You know, you might have made a fine Archivist yourself with that attitude."

"I was never that curious," she says, reaching over and pulling Elias's abandoned styrofoam cup to her. Upon inspection, it might genuinely be black coffee. But who's to say? 

"I suppose not."

"Hm." The receptionist looks at her employer. His business has never been her business, and maybe that has been her luck: for decades and decades she has greeted his appointments, scheduled and organised meetings, and kept her nose to herself. She has watched him age, time and time again, without feeling the weight of neither age nor patron herself. She has wondered if _he_ was keeping her unchanged deliberately, or if she, over the years, has become more one with the building itself than the organisation within. If she by design is the only thing around that is not going to change. 

"I miss him," Elias confesses, fixing his eyes on the ceiling. "A little. But that was always his thing, was it not?" 

"I don't know," the receptionist says. "He always seemed like the sort who wouldn't want to be noticed, let alone missed. Not the sentimental type, that one."

Elias snorts, folding his hands together. The receptionist sees him turn one of the golden rings on his fingers, a gentle caress over the metal. 

"And you're saying I am?" 

She narrows her eyes and takes a cautious sip from the cup. The liquid is approaching lukewarm, but if it isn't coffee, it's hiding it remarkably well. 

"I said nothing of the sort, Mr. Magnus."

"You would not be wrong, though," he says. He has closed his eyes, and if she didn't know him better, she would have taken the wetness there for distress. 

She sees the smile, though, the joy and wonder shining out through his edges. She wonders – how long before that horrible light has eaten him away entirely? And when it does, who is she supposed to receive? What happens to the building when there is no more Institute? 

Jonah Magnus chuckles, and reaches out to squeeze her hand. 

"Don't worry," he says. "It will be nothing but glorious."

The receptionist drinks her coffee and says nothing. 

* * *

The Thames is swirling upwards in a languid pattern, reaching for the watching sky. In the eternal late afternoon gloom, the water looks mostly dark, but bursts of oily colours dance on the surface where it is not in uproar. 

The receptionist stands and watches, wondering what it all is trying to achieve. Her trench coat flaps around her legs, and she adjusts her sunglasses. A few meters away, Jonah is leaning his back against the railing, snapping selfies on his phone. She wonders who he sends them to, and how; neither her mobile or landline have had anything but the most flimsy reception, and on the rare occasion that anything has come through, it has been distorted beyond all recognition. 

She suspects that Jonah is just pleased with his own face. 

"Rosie," he calls, not looking away from the screen. "Come here."

The receptionist digs around in her purse for her lipstick and mirror, and shakes a few spiders out of the glass before touching up her lips. Then she joins Jonah by his side, and he slides an arm around her shoulder. 

"Smile," he says, looking at the camera over the rim of his own sunglasses. She does, leaning her head against his shoulder and pursing her lips just so. 

The photos come out distorted, as anyone with sense would expect. Jonah flips through them as if it doesn't matter, brow furrowing as he reviews the ones of the two of them. Instead of his own face, there's a swirl of green and a mass of eyes—where the receptionist should be, the pixelated mush of colour bears a slight resemblance to a grinning skull.

Jonah looks at the picture and shudders. 

"Ah. You wouldn't expect it of me, but I tend to forget that you—" 

"Yes, well. Maybe we can hunt down a polaroid, if we _must_ document ourselves. That should take better to—" she waves her hand, "all of this."

He laughs at that, the sound clear and horrible against the murmur from the river, relief loosening his voice into something free and boyish. She sticks her hands in her pockets and smiles, looking out across the river. The trees on the opposite bank are burning with a blackened flame, smoke swirling around and around in intricate patterns, but the trees still stand where they were planted. Jonah's laughter fades, and he follows her gaze across the water. 

"I went to have a talk with Nathaniel," he says, turning around and gripping the railing with gloved hands. "To offer my condolences. Do you know what I found?" 

"I do not," she says, wary of the subject bubbling under the surface. The Eye's entanglement with the Lonely has always puzzled her, especially from the fits of rage and the slumps of melancholy the Lonely's servants have brought and left at the Institute. 

Jonah sighs. 

"Absolutely nothing," he says. He leans on his forearms, and the wind picks at his perfectly coiffed hair. "Nothing at all. Even the house was—gone. They must have immersed themselves fully into it, taking everything with them." He raises his eyes to the sky. "Or maybe the Eye took them. I don't know."

"You didn't look?" 

"I didn't. I haven't—I haven't felt Forsaken here, and I'll be damned before I go searching for it." 

The receptionist nods. No more Mr. Lukas indeed. 

"If I may be blunt, Mr. Magnus," she tells him, "You dug that grave yourself."

"Which one of them?" he asks, mouth twisting into a self-satisfied grin. He turns his head and looks in her direction, pushing the sunglasses up on his forehead. The swirling eyes behind them are in stark contrast to the waters of the river, and she startles by the sight of them. They definitely weren't that way this morning – however long ago that may have been. 

“Most of them,” the receptionist concedes.   
  


* * *

_(Jonah)_

He can feel the change distinctly within himself, all the time. His eyes are the least of it; something is gliding around under his skin, eating away at his physical being, and with every atom transformed, he becomes something else. Something new.

Jonah opens his eyes in a cottage. He opens his eyes in a grave. He opens his eyes in a submarine to watch the terror of the empty dark lonesome deep, and winks at the crew as they scream. 

He opens his eyes in a classroom full of adolescents trading bones. 

He opens his eye in the sky and watches the ruined city of London, the rubble in the streets and the twisting of the river, the oozing rotten patch three miles north of the Institute, and the burning waste that separates the rot from the rest of the city. 

He watches the fearless ones perish along with the fearful ones, hunted and haunted alike, and he watches the hunters emerge from the shadows, hungry and grinning. 

He drinks it in effortlessly, the knowledge and the terror and the little mundane details flowing directly into his being, shining bright through his skin, and he is knowing and known in equal measure. He opens his own eyes and watches the big, unfeeling one in the sky, and he feels its gaze upon him, terrible and wonderful. All his humanity laid bare and barely acknowledged, his transgressions and infidelity finally deemed infinitely inconsequential. All he has ever done has led him to this. 

“Take me,” he gasps at it. “Keep me. For good, this time.” 

The Eye simply _looks._

Down in the Archives, the statements whisper among themselves, trading secrets. Something many-eyed watches from the shelves, hissing at those who try to enter. 

"They miss him," the receptionist says, emerging from behind a shelf with her arms full of tape recorders. "You recon he'll be coming back?" 

Jonah opens his eyes in an empty cottage and looks around. 

"Yes," he says. "If nothing else, then he'll come for me."

"Are you afraid?" 

Jonah thinks about it. He holds up his near-translucent hands, the shine of them broken by the rings wrought with empty promises that he still can't find it in him to get rid of. Knives or fire won't kill him now, and he has no reason to refuse the Archive. They are the same cloth now, after all. 

Complete. 

"No," he tells her, watching as she nods. "No, not anymore. But I don't think I will be staying _here_ long."

She nods at him, again, adjusting the recorders to her left arm, and reaches out her right hand for him to shake. 

"Well, Mr. Magnus, it's been a pleasure."

He shakes her hand. Despite its youthful appearance, it feels cold and bony. Despite _everything,_ a familiar shudder of fear runs through him. 

"Please," he says. "It's Jonah."

She smiles at him. 

"Jonah, then. I'll be around for a while yet. Someone has to put the chairs on the tables and sweep the floors, after all of you have gone."

"I appreciate it," he says, and means it. "And your patience."

"For what it's worth," she says, catching his eye and lifting her chin, "I'm sorry about Mr. Lukas."

All over the world, Jonah closes his eyes for a moment. Deep inside him, a tiny hardened shell of human compassion flares up like a dying candle reaching for something to burn. The uncaring knowledge within him parts around it, allowing the soft ache to sputter. Jonah bows his head. 

"As you said," he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks, "I dug his grave myself, quite willingly. The Eye took some of him, and I am one with it. That's more than I could really have hoped for."

The receptionist nods again, her skull dipping forward rather jerkily. She doesn't speak again. Jonah shakes himself and opens all his eyes back up, knowledge washing over his being, and he laughs: it is so grand and terrible, and he is mastered. 

"Well, Rosie, if the Archivist comes back, I will be in my office. Maybe. If not, tell him good job, will you?" 

In Elias's office, Jonah takes off his rings and leaves them on the neatly organised desk. 

Then he turns away and begins his final ascend towards his rightful throne. 

* * *

_(Rosie)_

The receptionist stands on her own, watching the upward flow of the Thames again. The wind is in her face, bringing with it the smell of fire and fear, cold and nourishing. 

She’s holding a cup of something that definitely isn't tea, obtained from the little café around the corner from the Institute. Whatever it is is contained by the plastic lid, and it warms her bony fingers regardless of its true nature. 

One of her little rituals. 

She used to speculate a lot on the passage of time, and the markings it would leave on the physical world. Fine lines around the eyes, worn surfaces on the pavement, cracks in the rock used to build the dwellings of man; all insignificant held up against the movements and distortions of the planet itself. 

As Mr. Fairchild once told her – long before he'd had enough of the Watcher's attitude towards impulse and gave up his visits to the Institute – the span of time in the universe is so incomprehensible to the human mind that most do not bear thinking about it. He had grinned at her, lounging against her desk that had suddenly seemed much taller than it had been seconds ago, and leaned in conspiratorially. 

“Ms. Rosie,” he'd said. “Tell me, do the stars fear death before they burn out?” 

He had been swept away by the Institute head before she'd come up with an answer, and she'd been glad of it: the mere thought of the vast amount of waiting for the end of the Universe had left her uneasy, and she had realised she was gripping her desk tight, even after he had left. 

Ahead of her, an arc of water breaks off the main flow of the river, twirling around itself. It reaches for the city beyond, twisting its way over a neighborhood that soon will be flooded. The smell of fear in the wind changes colour, and the receptionist nods in slight approval. 

After a while, fog starts rolling in from the west, slowly enveloping the waterfront in misty grey fumes. It dulls the howling of the wind, and the screams in the distance seem to wither and die completely, until the entire world is perfectly still. A shrill tone pierces through the mist, a call to attention. The receptionist stands firm, dragging her coat a little tighter around her to ward off the chill. 

The shrill tone blows through the mist again, and ahead in the river there's the silhouette of a ship moving in close to where she's standing, the landing being set down immediately in front of her. The receptionist checks her purse, before boarding the empty ship. She is not surprised to find no one there, but heads for the captain's cabin. 

It, too, is empty, safe for a worn captain's hat, abandoned on the cot. From her purse, the receptionist takes out seven golden rings and drops them into the hat, one by one. They clink quietly against each other. 

“Well,” she says to the empty cabin, “I hope that works. Goodbye, then.”

* * *

The receptionist has spent a long time receiving visitors and statement givers at the Institute, has seen them come and go to their ghastly ends, and she has seen buildings and staff replaced time and time again. 

Now the building stands empty, with only the whispering statements to keep her company, and the markings of people long gone to remind her of their existence. Now and then, people will still show up in the hopes that someone within the Institute will know what to do, ragged and changed and shaking. 

She smiles at them, and tells them to wait: the Archivist will be in just after tea-time to take their statements. 

She offers them a chair and something to drink in the sun-lit reception area, and watches the pulsing veins snaking around their wrists and ankles.

As dust settles over the floors and windowsills, she wonders if any time has passed, and if anything will change at all, before the sun burns out. 

_end._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello, thank you so much for reading! I'd love to know if you liked this little thing. 
> 
> If you wanna see my unfortunate crush on Elias Bouchard up close, I'm on tumblr (holoxam) and twitter (holoxam).
> 
> Take care!


End file.
